One of Mobile's most important exports starting in the late nineteenth century and continuing into the first decades of the twentieth century were the bananas imported from the Caribbean and South America. Here, laborers are loading bananas onto a...

Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, one of the South's most popular 19th century authors, seated at her writing desk. A staunch Confederate supporter, Wilson and her family lost much of their wealth when the Civil War ended. Her childhood home still stands...

People's Drugs, located at 522 Dauphin Street in Mobile, Alabama, offered a fine example of a drug store and soda fountain when this picture was made early in the twentieth century. It was owned and operated by African Americans.

A group of Mobile Daily News employees gathered outside their offices at 59 St. Michael Street about 1900. Unlike today, when Mobile has only one daily newspaper, in the early twentieth century, there were three dailies, two weeklies, one monthly,...

This early twentieth century photograph shows St. Joseph Street at Bienville Square. The building on the far right was one of Mobile's first steel structures and housed the Forbes Piano Company. Attorneys William B. Inge and William H. Armbrecht,...

In the early twentieth century, Mobile, Alabama, had a glut of newspapers. Publishers were always looking for ways to advertise their gazettes. Here, Evelyn Doyle, the wife of the paper's circulation manager, Lionel Doyle, wears a dress and hat...

St. Joseph Street looking north toward the GM&O building, ca. 1905. In the center of the photograph is Temperance Hall, where many Mardi Gras coronations were held. By the time of this photograph in the early twentieth century, a skating rink...

Hammel's Department Store window display featuring the fashions of Nelly Don. Born Ellen Howard Quinlan in Kansas, Nelly Don is believed by some to have been one of the twentieth century's most important dress designers. It is said that she...

At the turn of the twentieth century the importation of bananas from Central and South America became an important part of Mobile's economy. Here men are unloading that fruit from an incoming vessel and carrying them to waiting refrigerated...

Around the turn of the 20th century, floats that advertised local businesses and their products regularly followed behind Mardi Gras parades. This is an example of this practice, as sponsored by the Oakdale Ice and Fuel Company.

This early twentieth century photograph shows the interior of the Home Industry Iron Works, which was located at the southeast corner of Water and State streets. The company manufactured and repaired all kinds of machinery and created decorative...

Members of the Crescent City Orchestra of New Orleans, Louisiana. The Crescent City was a semi-professional symphonic jazz orchestra founded before the turn of the 20th century. Here they pose while playing in Mobile, Alabama, about 1925.